A Mission of Understanding

"Perhaps the evangelical strategy of witness through presence in the public schools is wearing down," Sikkink said.

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His first week of school, Leydorf estimated he was different from 90 percent of the people on U-Md.'s campus. One kid in the dorm bragged that he hosted a sex talk show. Another invited Leydorf to a strip club. "I'm definitely out of my comfort zone," Leydorf said nervously then.

With his flip-flops and collection of "The Simpsons" DVDs, Leydorf could be any other guy in his hall. Except he's not the one with the video boxing game or the posters of Tupac Shakur or Bob Marley. He's the one with the index card taped to his desk: "Romans 1:16: I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile."

But the biggest change for Leydorf was the feeling that he was squelching his personality. At home, his friends nicknamed him "The Politician" for his tendency to confidently schmooze. He didn't like this newfound reticence.

He'd also decided not to say anything to his roommate about the Facebook remark. He concluded that the roommate was using the term "evangelical" as shorthand for religious-right leaders such as Jerry Falwell whom Leydorf considers intolerant.

One late August day, he compared his sentiments about Maryland to biting into an apple that's mealy. The apple is still good for you but doesn't taste so good, he said as he walked across campus.

By October, some of the Politician was back. Leydorf had applied for a seat in student government, joined the student group InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and was attending any event he could fit into his schedule; one day it was a Muslim student discussion group; the next it was a dialogue between an evangelical student group and a gay student group.

And he was diving into his new challenge: understanding the secular psyche. For example, what exactly was driving the activism he was seeing among irreligious people?

"For me, if I didn't believe in God, it seems that the natural conclusion is to live life as selfishly as possible," he said. "If I wasn't religious, I can certainly see living my life quite differently."

He also felt himself opening up a bit on the subject of homosexuality. He'd gone to the dialogue and also had been assigned a book condemning anti-gay discrimination for a class on civics. Even before coming to Maryland, he'd wrestled with the idea that God sends people to Hell, but now he felt even less comfortable judging who.

"You put more faces to [a subject], and it makes a little bit of difference, and you understand it from their point of view more," he said. "If Jesus was here today, he would hang around with the gay community; these guys are shunned."

Then he paused.

"To me, that's the definition of tolerance -- for us to be able to say to one another's face 'You're wrong,' and be okay with it."

* * *

In more than 20 years of campus ministry, Neil Livingstone has listened to many students like Leydorf struggle with the basic question: How can I express not only that the Gospel is meaningful to me, but is actually true? Today Livingstone is the regional director for InterVarsity, which has nearly 31,000 undergraduates in its campus programs nationwide.

Although it's become trendy among young people to be spiritual, he said, "the thing that will get you into trouble is talking about Jesus or self-identifying as evangelical."

Bekah Bolton heard that the majority of Christians lose their faith during college because of that pressure; that worried her as she segued this summer from 12 years at a private, mostly evangelical school in Massachusetts to Georgetown University. She wanted her beliefs challenged, but would she be ostracized for talking about salvation, she wondered? Would she be lonely?

Her biggest struggle, it turned out, came in dealing with the science-oriented approach everyone took toward God, including her professor in a required religion-survey course.

"People don't understand their need for a personal savior; they want to know why it fits into nature," said Bolton, 18, who joined a Bible study group and a club soccer team.

One semester in, Bolton has found a strategy for thinking about non-Christians: "In one sense, I see them as people who need the savior that I have. But I can't judge them; I don't know their heart. They may believe in God."

About 30 percent of college-bound graduates from Bolton's alma mater, Lexington Christian Academy, go to Christian schools.

"Today we encourage them to think more broadly," said associate head of school Kim Winsor. In the past decade, she said, Lexington made a concerted effort to sharpen its focus on being a competitive prep school.

"Some Christian schools are saying, 'Well, you should go to the mission field for five years versus going to college," she said. "We applaud that, but it's not our main focus."

* * *

Shortly after Christmas, Leydorf and a few other recent Annapolis Area Christian School grads were asked back to talk about college. They were asked: "What was your biggest temptation, and how did you deal with it?" For Leydorf, it turned out not to be such things as drinking and sex but rather a type of religious hubris.

"It's tempting to feel like you're better than other people because you're keeping to the standard better than they are, that you're doing things the right way," he recalled telling the younger students.

But Leydorf found there might be only one thing that truly is absolute: his faith.

"Now I feel that I'm very entrenched in my faith, my view of God. But when it comes to other things, like gay marriage or any number of things, I'm not deeply entrenched in them," he said.

"I feel like I'm different, but I don't feel alienated. And that's not a bad place to be."